>>47639it's not even that much of an exception when you consider that HL1 was made by mostly developers that left pretty much afterwards, some moved to other studios or retired to a cushy administration role within VALVe where they did nothing but collect paychecks.
not to even mention the fact that HL1 is a glorified Quake mod which still has problems dating back to that engine such as the map rendering limits
HL2 was not even that good, the fact the project was going to be originally so much more and ended up being rushed into a nonsensical tech demo probably caused by the fact that good games like VTMB beat the engine owners to make a REAL game, and the fact they had next to no cybersecurity which caused for them to be "hacked" by a literal child in some europoor shithole which they had to trick into turning himself in with the promise of a job.
their storefront is boosted, backed and dragging years of disgusting practices, collosal fuckups and poor implementation held together by a parasocial cult of personality for an useless fat fuck who probably didn't do a single bit of work in his entire life; and a skin market that was known to be used as money laundering operations in Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Southeast Asia and such.
It's everything wrong with capitalism and it's protestant morality; the literal beast of babylon hid in the coat of the righteous.